Gulls gather on the Lake Erie shore last December amid the winter swells. Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio needs to drive home to the Trump administration the political foolhardiness of gutting Great Lakes funding. The national interest demands it, and so do the jobs tied to a healthy Lake Erie, but given that Trump might owe his presidency to the 75 electoral votes he won from five Great Lakes states, including Ohio, there could also be a political price to pay, writes the editorial board. (Trump won the Electoral College by 77 votes but only after elector defections that mostly impacted Hillary Clinton's total.)

(Jon Fobes, The Plain Dealer, File, 2016)

Never. No way. A frittering away of the nation's most precious water resources. A job-killer, and a curse on future generations.

Portman must do all he can -- and no less than he did during the Obama administration when he helped protect the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative from repeated proposed cuts by President Barack Obama (ironically, since Obama started the initiative.)

Never has the threat been more grave.

To help pay for tens of billions in increased defense spending, President Donald Trump's administration reportedly is considering eviscerating the Great Lakes initiative with a 97 percent cut.

Signing a joint letter with other senators in the Great Lakes caucus, which Portman co-chairs, is not enough. A Portman spokeswoman said the letter will call on new Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt to keep initiative funding at its current $300 million level.

* Email general questions or comments about the editorial board to Elizabeth Sullivan, opinion director for cleveland.com.

These are no token reductions. And what's motivating them is no garden-variety budget revamp. A polite letter is insufficient to make this point.

Full funding is what the Great Lakes initiative must get. And Portman is peculiarly situated to get it.

Portman sits on the Senate Finance Committee. He was director of Management and Budget in Republican President George W. Bush's Cabinet. He is a member of the president's party.

He is in a peerless position to keep pushing for such funding. And push he must - strongly and steadily. Anything less would endanger a resource precious beyond value.

The Trump White House may not know it, but the Great Lakes are the world's largest surface area of fresh water. Few things can be more critical not just for Greater Clevelanders but for the nation than the restoration and protection of Lake Erie and her ancient liquid sisters.

Yet this isn't just about the future. As Toledo's 2014 water crisis demonstrated, threats to Lake Erie are critical today.

More than 400,000 people in the Toledo area were left without drinking water when a toxic algal bloom turned western Lake Erie into something resembling pea soup. The bloom resulted from runoff from fertilizer and animal waste on farms, leaking septic systems, an increase in storms and other causes -- causes that are being addressed locally and by the state but that also require restoration dollars and federal clean-water grant money to continue.

Cleveland Democrat Sherrod Brown already has said in a statement he'll "fight like hell in the Senate to restore this funding in full."

Protecting Lake Erie long has been a bipartisan matter in Ohio. Last month, for instance, Republican Reps. Dave Joyce of Bainbridge Township, Jim Renacci of Wadsworth, Bob Gibbs of Holmes County and Bill Johnson of Marietta joined Democratic Reps. Marcia Fudge of Warrensville Heights, Marcy Kaptur of Toledo and Tim Ryan of Niles in urging the Trump administration to retain the full $300 million Great Lakes Restoration Initiative funding, cleveland.com's Sabrina Eaton reports.

Joyce and Kaptur are members of the powerful U.S. House Appropriations Committee, and Joyce's fellow Republicans control the House of Representatives.

But Portman is best positioned to drive home to the White House that this is not just about money or water.

It's about politics.

Gutting money for the Great Lakes would be foolish: Voters in Ohio and four other Great Lakes states -- Michigan, Wisconsin, Indiana and Pennsylvania -- helped make Donald Trump president. And this would be the thanks they'd get?